Month: July 2013

I’ve often railed against Horror movies, but as I’ve said, a book I read encouraged me to watch “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and to begin the Saw series.  I have thus far watched the first three (of 7, I believe).

Unexpectedly, these movies have proved salutary.  For some reason the Saw movies comfort me.  They provide a needed processing space for some emotional truths I have been avoiding.

This is more personal information than I would normally share, but scenes from the TCM kept running through my head the last time I saw my family.  The hurt was subterranean, as were the attacks.  I don’t know what sustained physical abuse is like–I was often spanked, sometimes slapped, but never endured the sorts of things one reads about–but it has long seemed to me that in physical abuse there is at least clarity about the nature of the assault.  Being hit often in the dark leaves one both in pain and confused.

Be all that as it may, let me offer a short truth:

The lesson of Horror movies is that in a just world there is cruelty.

Now, this may make no sense to you.  The “problem of pain” has been around since there have been theologians and philosophers.

Let me define “just” as: conducive to needed learning.  Let me define cruelty as: “unwanted and seemingly excessive pain”.

I am tempted to keep talking, but I think I am walking past something, so I will leave it here.

With regard to the previous post, I did want to note that I have long been conscious that my intellectualism is a protective barrier.  What would have been most obvious for me to have done is find a job thinking somewhere, so that my weakness became a strength.  I could easily have done this as a lawyer, an engineer, or academic of some sort.  I did in fact start down the path of academia, but even then I could see that in some way I was retreating, and I didn’t like it.

I earn my income now to some extent using my intellect–being intelligent is beneficial just about everywhere–but what is more important is my people skills, which are still at times lumpy, but by and large reasonably good.  This has taken a lot of development on my part.  I more or less consciously chose a career path doing things I was NOT congenitally suited for.  I don’t like the idea of having weaknesses, even though I continue to have many.

This all is my long way of saying I likely repeat myself.  I am at times like that old joke about the two men drinking at a bar, discovering they have an amazing amount in common, the punchline to which is “Oh, that’s the O’Malley brothers.  They’ve been drinking again.”

I “rediscover” things about myself and the world.  This is an interesting process, the most important part of which is, I think, seeing the old in slightly new ways.  We evolve and change every day, and what you thought you saw once and finally many years ago can always shine again in new ways.

My most personal stuff I write in a non-NSA compliant format–with pen and paper–but it doesn’t seem too inappropriate to lapse on occasion into the “Daily Me” mode which is the default for so many bloggers.

Looks like it’s been about two weeks since my last post.  My brain has of course been active, and at some point I have 4-5 posts to make, but I’ve been focusing more on WHY I post, why my brain is so active, why I feel a need to insert my opinions on everything.

Obviously, I am intelligent.  Where I stand on a curve will depend on where you are standing, but I think I have proven that in a battle of minds I can at a minimum hold my own.  I have degrees from good schools, high test scores, and above average children (I am not a big fan of Garrison Keillor because of his politics, but I won’t deny he is witty).

But what drives me to post?  I get anxious when I haven’t written anything in a while.  I am not using by brain for useful, planned work.  Were this the case, I would long ago have completed a more comprehensive economics text, and rewritten by treatise on Goodness.  I would take projects one at a time, and focus carefully and creatively on that subject, on that work, and do it thoroughly and well, then move on to the next project.

What I have concluded is what may have long been obvious to the more careful reader, which is that I use my brain as camouflage, as a means of diverting my own attention from the gaps in my own focus, from emotional weaknesses.  When I write, it looks to all the world like work.  It looks like creative output, useful effort.  And it is that.

But it is not fully what I am actually capable of.  In all too many cases, it is a diversion from needed work, in particular from planned, organized work. This works in large measure because I am good at what I do, at least in my own estimation.

This needs to change: not the posting, but the metastructure within which it happens.  Seeing this–seeing this emotional reality, FEELING this emotional reality–has caused me to realize this change is needed.

Generalizing this, though, it occurred to me that camouflage is all around us.  Consider a cop or soldier who worries daily about violence even when it is not present or remotely likely.  There is a t-shirt some soldiers wear that says “I may look normal, but I’ve already killed you twice in my mind”.  I worked with cops, and they are some of the most fearful people you will meet, not in the sense that they are unwilling to engage in dangerous work, or are paralyzed with anxiety, but rather in the sense that they are very closed to all people they do not know well.  There is a great deal of what might be called social xenophobia.

Now, clearly in some respects this is an adaptive behavior.  They need to some extent to be able to treat people as objects.  They need to distance themselves emotionally from what can be very stressful, and occasionally fatal work.

But is this not also an ideal place for people who are already socially isolated, somewhat paranoid?  I felt very comfortable being in the police department because I did not have to deal in emotions.  I could just be in my head, and that was OK.

Or to take the opposite end of the spectrum, what about people who lack a stable sense of self, of boundaries, of personal initiative?  Would they not be drawn to “helping” professions?  Would they not blend in, would they not camouflage their basic weaknesses as strengths?  Would someone who does not know who they are or what they want not potentially be a very good care-giver?

I have told the truth here, and then I have operated upon that truth analytically.  This post is an example of what I am talking about, but as I have said tends to be the case, it is hopefully nonetheless useful for someone.